“Stand,” I blurted without even looking at my cards.
“Are you certain about that, Lord Ansel?” St. Clair asked. Frowning, I glanced down and flushed as I realized my count was a measly eleven. I opened my mouth to ask for another card but was silenced by a glare from the dealer.
He cleared his throat with a stern look at me and then moved to the next player. “The gent has already spoken, sir. Play is to you.”
While my mind had been wandering, St. Clair’s pile of money had steadily increased. Mine had waxed and waned, mostly out of sheer luck and no actual skill on my part. Other gentlemen had been replaced by new players, and I hadn’t even noticed. Apart from my last silly blunder, over the subsequent rounds, I’d done surprisingly well, due to the dealer having a run of terrible luck.
I peered at St. Clair, whose concentration remained sharp, his gaze fixed on the cards on the table. For a second, I was sure that I could see his lips moving as though he was tallying something. While I’d had the same thought earlier about keeping track of the high and low cards, I’d never presumed one could do it by a counting system. Was St. Clair using mathematics to gain an advantage in this game? If he was, it was impressive, to say the least.
“Bloody cheater!” the man at the end of the table shouted, standing so quickly that his chair tumbled backward as he slammed his fist down onto the baize. He wasn’t as well dressed as some of the other patrons, which meant he was likely gentry or a merchant. It took me a second to realize that he was glaring at St. Clair, who had won the last round and accumulated a large pile of money. “You marked the cards, you thief!”
St. Clair’s eyes flashed with rancor, though his face remained neutral. “I beg your pardon, sir. My cards are the same as yours.”
“Then you did something,” the man snarled. “Memorized and cheated.”
“Memorization isn’t illegal,” St. Clair replied calmly, as if being accused wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. “In fact, anyonewith half a brain could do it.” His lip curled. “Though I suppose you are likely in the minority.”
“Think you’re so smart, do you? Bloody pencil sniffer.” The man clenched his fists, ready to do bodily harm even as the dealer urgently signaled for the factotum, who managed the floor, and was already on his way over with two burly men.
Good, that was good.
But my relief was short-lived, when the player to my right suddenly pushed to his feet as well, pointing at the first accuser’s sleeve, where the edge of a card—an ace of hearts—was clearly visible beneath his cuff. “You’re the cheat! What’s that hanging from your shirt?”
The first man blanched, but then went red. “Mind your own deuced business!”
“Fraud!” the second roared.
A vein popped in the first man’s head when he lunged and swung at the second. Cards flew everywhere while more chairs toppled over, the shouting so loud that my ears started ringing. It was suddenly a free-for-all as hands and limbs flew and bodies crashed into each other. Coins clinked as desperate fingers grabbed for piles of money on surrounding tables in the melee. A wave of panic hit me. If this went south and the proctors arrived, I could not be involved or caught in the middle of a brawl.
“Roz!” I heard a panicked voice yelling. My head whipped around. Searching through the mass of colliding bodies, I spied Will’s pale face on the other side of the room. The twins were near him, but those two buffoons were grinning and throwing punches left and right. My heart sank. We were all going to go toprison and my woefully brief stint as an independent university student would be over.
Mylifewould be over.
“Roz…here! We…leave…,” Will shouted again, but his words were jumbled and broken apart by other shouts in the rapidly worsening scuffle. I blinked, peering through the throng as he struggled to keep someone up at his side. Gracious, was that poor Harold slumped over?
It would be impossible to get to them. My best chance was to stick with St. Clair, who I imagined would not want to be caught either. We both had a lot to lose—a potential fellowship for him and, well, my whole future for me.
“Go!” I yelled back. “I’ll find my way out!”
My stomach dropped as I felt a strong hand yank me out of the way of a spray of blood. I almost gagged as the splotch of scarlet bled into the pretty green baize of the card table. Fear tangled with horror as the man who had started it all threw a vicious elbow at the second man, who ended up in a heap on the floor. His bloodshot gaze swung to my left just as St. Clair made a sound like a growl and braced his shoulders, fists flying up at the ready.
“Try it,” he said to the man, whose nostrils flared like an angry bull.
My heart hammered behind my ribs. Was he going tofight? That pigheaded man was nearly double as wide as we were combined. “St. Clair, no. He’s a beast.”
Shockingly, my tutor grinned. “Worried for me, Roz?”
I couldn’t fully register my glee at the fact that he had finallycalled me by my nickname, though standing shoulder to shoulder in a scuffle that could cost the two of us everything probably made us the best of mates. “Worried forus,yes.”
I barely swallowed my high-pitched scream before the man was lurching toward us. Mimicking St. Clair, though I had no idea what I was doing, I threw my fists up to chin level and squared my weight over my feet. But I needn’t have worried. With a confident two-punch combination, the boy next to me ducked out of harm’s way and then walloped his adversary in the right temple with his left fist and followed with an uppercut to the man’s jaw that made his eyes roll back in his head and sent him crashing backward.
My mouth slackened, but I didn’t have time to congratulate St. Clair before I noticed a figure looming from the back of us, knuckles raised and heading right for my tutor.Oh, good gracious, he’s going to hit him in the head!
“Watch out!” I yelled. But when he didn’t move, possibly because my warning was lost in the kerfuffle, I had to act. I didn’t think—I shoved him sideways, so he wasn’t in the direct path of the assailant, rammed my fist up and out, and hoped for the best.
“What the hell?” St. Clair shouted as he stumbled and gripped the edge of a table for balance.
When my balled fingers connected with a fleshly thud into the oncoming attacker, I didn’t expect it to hurt so much. A shriek bubbled up as I wrenched my injured hand back to cradle it, belatedly registering the man dropping to his knees, coughing, and clutching his throat where I must have made contact.I did that!
